A DARKER, MORE BROODING `BATMAN' TAKES FLIGHT.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Critic

A MOVIE MORE easily admired more than enjoyed, Christopher Nolan's ``Batman Begins'' takes the Caped Crusader back to his crime-fighting origins with a seriousness that borders on solemnity.

The filmmakers have given comic-book geeks the Dark Knight they have longed for these many years; for the rest of us, this 140-minute movie proves to be fitfully engaging but neither as entertaining nor as brainy as it needs to be.

Nolan (``Memento,'' ``Insomnia''), who wrote the movie with David Goyer (the ``Blade'' series), has reacted to Joel Schumacher's gaudy, meaningless ``Batman'' movies by swinging the pendulum too far in the other direction. Sure, ``Batman Begins'' beats Schumacher's nipple-fetish Batman costumes and the spectacle of watching governor-in-waiting Ah-nold fumble his way through cartoon villainy. But you get the feeling that somewhere along the way, Nolan and Goyer forgot they were adapting a comic book and not one of Dickens' orphan tales.

The story of Bruce Wayne is, of course, an orphan story; the saga begins with the young boy watching helplessly as a petty criminal murders his saintly father and mother in a botched hold-up attempt. Young Master Bruce doesn't have to lead a hard-knock life, though, given the fact that dad was a billionaire and trusty butler Alfred (Michael Caine, touchingly paternal) is there to meet his every need.

Still, there are nightmares, horrific dreams about his parents' slaying and the time he fell down an empty well outside Wayne Manor and startled a colony of bats. The movie's first hour is a scrapbook of young Bruce's life, flipping back and forth in time. Bruce feels responsible for his parents' murder; he hungers for revenge against the man who killed them.

Eventually, this leads Bruce (played as an adult by Christian Bale) to a Chinese prison, where he is discovered by a ninja master (Liam Neeson), a moral relativist named Ducard, who schools his young charge in the martial arts and Zen gobbledygook. (This Batman knows martial arts.) But when his mentor suggests that Gotham is a modern-day Sodom in need of a moral cleansing of the hell-and-brimstone variety, Bruce assumes the role of Abraham, saying the innocent should not have to suffer for the sins of the depraved majority.

This story of young Bruce's transformation is involving and, at times, quite powerful. But when the movie returns to Gotham, Nolan and Goyer feel compelled to deliver the sorts of things people expect from summer movies - stunts, explosions and inconsequential busyness. And their hearts just don't seem to be in it.

This means that while ``Batman Begins'' never fails to hold your interest as a character study, it labors whenever it shifts its attention to the world at large. The villains are underdeveloped, the production design darkly dull and the action scenes unexciting. When the Osama bin Laden-like bad guy threatens to plunge Gotham's citizenry into a frenzy of rage and fear via contamination of the water supply and you're focusing on Christian Bale's Dirty Harry cadences, the movie has failed on a basic storytelling level.

The question is: Do the filmmakers even care? Look where Nolan lavishes his time and attention - the creation of the Batsuit, the Batgadgets, the Batcave (it really is a bat cave!), the Batmobile. It's all in the service of putting Bruce/Batman in the real/physical world, an approach that Nolan obsessively maintains until hyper-edited action scenes - repetitive sequences that have the Caped Crusader vanquishing his foes in a batlike blur that looks as realistic as Adam West's padded Batsuit.

Midway through the movie, Nolan tries to add a little humor here and there, but laughter has little place in this world. This is bad news given that at the end of ``Batman Begins,'' we learn that the next installment will spotlight the Joker. Maybe by then, the filmmakers will discover a happy medium between Schumacher's gaudy pageantry and this honorably grim slice of gloom.

Glenn Whipp, [phone]

glenn.whipp(at)dailynews.com

BATMAN BEGINS - Two and one half stars

(PG-13: intense action violence, disturbing images, some thematic elements)

Starring: Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson.

Director: Christopher Nolan.

Running time: 2 hr. 20 min.

Playing: Sneak previews midnight tonight at selected theaters; opens in wide release Wednesday.

In a nutshell: Somber creation story that works best for the hard-core fans. Better than the Schumacher movies but lacks the playful irony of the Tim Burton efforts.

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(color) Christian Bale stars in ``Batman Begins,'' a more roots-based reimaging of the story.